Chapter 317 The Time Is Still Not Ripe

Chapter 317 The Time Is Still Not Ripe

Chapter 317 The Time Is Still Not Ripe

in a blink.

More than half a year has passed since we invested in acquiring Tudou.com in the first half of last year.

For traditional enterprises, half a year is not a long time.

Unlike the fiercely competitive Internet companies, a difference of just one or two months can determine the life and death of a startup project.

Many times, one step ahead leads to many steps ahead, such as QQ, owned by Penguin Group. In fact, it is not difficult to develop instant messaging social software, but no one can compete with it.

My classmates and friends all use QQ, so naturally no one uses other products for entertainment. After the Internet ecological chain is gradually formed, user stickiness and retention rate are particularly high.

Wang Wei, the founder of Tudou.com, always felt that being just a video sharing platform was a bit of a small undertaking.

LeTV, which was founded two years ago, announced last year that it would cooperate with telecommunications operators to try to launch the so-called "mobile TV series". It spent 300 million yuan to shoot a 25-minute short film. Only a few new mobile phones support online video playback.

In Wang Wei's opinion, the so-called "mobile phone TV series" are either a scam or hype, but LeTV's "Internet TV" project has indeed formed a direct competitive relationship with Tudou.

June or July last year.

Wang Wei had a meal with Fan Wumian, during which he asked about Tudou.com's development strategy plan.

The only reply I got was that the time was not yet ripe.

Tudou.com is not short of funds at present. Over the past six months, it has received a total of approximately RMB 3300 million from Fan Wumian in batches, and the employee's work number has just been raised to "0082".

Among them are more than 40 programmers who have been busy upgrading and optimizing Tudou's software and hardware in preparation for the subsequent launch of long video projects.

In addition, a subsidiary company was established to specialize in studying how to efficiently convert film and television drama reels into digital film and television resources, and to restore them to improve video clarity.

The plan to hoard the online copyrights of film and television dramas has not stopped, and it continues to purchase them from outside at a rate of 20 films per month.

Just last month, we bought the online copyrights of "The Lotus Lantern", "Jingwei Filling the Sea" and "The Chinese Paladin".

It is worth mentioning that.

Tang Ren Film and Television, which produced "The Legend of Sword and Fairy", asked for a huge price of 2 yuan per episode. Fan Wumian made an exception and agreed, after all, it was a phenomenal hit drama that had become extremely popular.

Other film and television dramas do not receive such treatment and continue to spend money to hoard online copyrights at prices of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of RMB per film. At the same time, they have raised their requirements for the quality of film and television dramas and only purchase works that have been broadcast on satellite TV.

Mr. Jia, the boss of LeTV, also reacted.

In recent times, LeTV has spent millions of dollars and is following Fan Wumian's example to spend money on buying TV series. For example, last year's "The Emperor Wu of Han" and "New Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" were both bought by Boss Jia.

The video website market is huge and it is impossible to be completely monopolized, so Fan Wumian is too lazy to care about LeTV's latest developments.

Rather than competing with others, he just wanted to slowly develop Tudou.com in the most cost-effective way, for fear of falling into the trap of the "money-burning war among video sites."

Wang Wei, the founder of Tudou.com, waited patiently for more than half a year and made all the preparations in advance.

The timing is still not ripe, but we can be more prudent and seize market share in advance.

Tudou's current business model is similar to that of Youtube.

It is nothing more than users spontaneously sharing videos, automatically sorting them into a “daily hot list” based on their popularity, and pushing videos to users according to algorithms.

The review process was outsourced to a labor service company in Shenzhen, which is responsible for eliminating videos containing pornographic, terrorist, bloody and violent content.

As for the infringement of overseas film and television works, there has been no strict investigation for the time being. It will not be too late to remove them from the shelves when they are sued and reported. Taking advantage of the popularity of Japanese comics and American dramas, it will help increase user activity.

At first glance, Tudou.com looks a bit like Bilibili, with the average user age being only around 20 years old.
Friday afternoon, January 2006, 1.

Seeing a young girl rushing into his office, Wang Wei asked happily:

"You got it back? It will be online in less than four hours, hurry up and get ready!"

The young girl's name was Yue Yixuan. She blinked her eyes when she heard the words, holding the laptop provided by the company, and asked blankly:
"I'm the only one in the production management department. Where did they come from? Mr. Wang, who should I contact for work?"

"."

Wang Wei scratched his head, stood up and said, "Forget it, I'll go with you. Since we're launching the web series, we need to ask the Human Resources Department to recruit more new employees. It won't work just by you."

The online drama project had just started, and there was no object worth learning from. As the general manager of the company, Wang Wei could only cross the river by feeling the stones.

Yue Yixuan, a lone soldier, has been very busy these days. He nodded repeatedly and said excitedly:

"In the past two weeks, I have been mainly responsible for connecting with the digital restoration studio. I have produced more than a dozen TV series and plan to release them online before "The Useless Man". What do you think, Mr. Wang? By then, after users have finished watching Mr. Fan's short drama, they can watch other TV series."

The video website industry is just starting out, and looking around, it’s a wilderness.

Only a few companies, including LeTV, have tried to seize the new opportunities brought about by the rise of online video.

Their current situation is even worse than Tudou.

Therefore, we have to rely on ourselves to figure out how to develop and how to operate profitably, and we cannot learn from successful experiences from outside.

After listening to this, Wang Wei frowned and thought for a while, then replied:
"Don't release all of them at once. Release one or two old dramas every week or so and send users a preview in advance. This seems to be more likely to increase user activity."

"The efficiency of the digital restoration studio is a bit slow. It seems that we need to recruit more people for them, otherwise there will be a shortage of talents soon, which will delay subsequent development."

"In order to help us get back on track, Mr. Fan personally conceived and filmed "The Useless Man". It's almost the end of the year. How much year-end bonus you can get depends on the user growth and activity in the next period of time."

"The Useless Man" can only attract traffic to Tudou.com.

Whether users can stay and develop the habit of watching online dramas depends mainly on the quality of the old dramas and the website experience.

The first batch of TV series to be digitally restored include popular works such as "The Fragrant Sophora Japonica in May", "The Secret Visits of Kangxi 1", "The Iron Teeth and Bronze Teeth Ji Xiaolan 1", "The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils", "Heroes of Sui and Tang Dynasties", "Young Huang Feihong", and "Feng Yun 1".

These are all well-received dramas personally selected by Fan Wumian, such as "The Legend of Sword and Fairy" and "Home with Kids", and are undergoing digital restoration.

Video sites are a new thing.

It is still unclear how the official and mainstream TV stations view it taking food from their own bowls.

In order to avoid causing a violent reaction, it is obviously more appropriate to adopt the strategy of "boiling a frog in warm water". If certain institutions and companies are angered, Shanzeiwang Media will definitely be affected.

Tudou.com is currently a loss-making business, but Bandit King Media is extremely profitable.

Fan Wumian is certainly able to prioritize, and this time he is only launching a dozen old dramas, which is a good opportunity to test the reactions of all parties.

Wang Wei is very clear about this.

Therefore, a few days ago, when he learned that "The Useless Man" was about to be released, he only promoted it within Tudou.com and did not publicize it everywhere.

Leaving the office with Yue Yixuan,
Wang Wei first went to see the director of the development department to inquire about the test results after the website was upgraded in the early morning.

After learning that everything was normal, he picked "Storm Warriors 1", "Young Huang Feihong" and "The Secret History of Kangxi", and decided to launch these three dramas first tonight.

Accompany and fish.

After arranging all the preparations, Yue Yixuan finally had some free time to watch the first episode of "The Useless Man" while eating, which lasted only 1 minutes in total.

I originally thought it was similar to other short plays, just a simple description of a short story.

I clicked in and watched a short clip, and found the style of painting to be peculiar and full of humor.

Seeing bursts of laughter coming from the open programmers' office, Yue Yixuan guessed that they were also watching "The Loser".

When a programmer saw Miss Aoi in the drama, he immediately shouted "WTF" and quickly called his friends and colleagues to watch.

Yue Yixuan didn't know Aoi, but when she heard her name mentioned, she opened Baidu out of curiosity and searched for pictures.

When the search results were refreshed, there were pictures of swimsuits, school uniforms, stewardesses, and maids. Yue Yixuan was terrified and quickly closed the browser, fearing that she would make a fool of herself in front of her colleagues.

……

(End of this chapter)